Judgment at Bridge 2: Be a Better Player and More Difficult Opponent

by Mike Lawrence

My second book was Judgment at Bridge, a book that looked at judgment, a quality that goes beyond mere rules. It’s something that you learn in bits and pieces, not in great gobs all at once. In Judgment at Bridge, I took my 16 years of experience and put them into the book, hopefully making the introduction to judgment easier than if you had to get it one bid, one card, one disaster, and one success at a time.It was nice to have Alfred Sheinwold write an introduction to it.Things change and today, more and better judgment is needed to keep up with changes in bidding and play. Well, not so much in play and defense but there definitely have been changes in bidding.Judgment at Bridge 2 is more than a sequel. It takes all of Judgment at Bridge and adds to it. Bridge is still not a game of rules. It wasn’t back in 1976 and it isn’t now. It won’t be in 2040, either. Bridge is a game of guidelines and ongoing experiences. In Judgment at Bridge 2, I will show you how to approach the game.What do you need to be a better player?What do you need to be a more difficult opponent?There are a lot of things you can do to achieve both.In addition, I am including a chapter offering opinions on various conventions that you should consider now, conventions you should consider shortly, and conventions and treatments that should be removed from your convention card.There are many aspects to bridge and each comes with different issues.

Genres: Nonfiction

233 pages, Kindle Edition

Published July 1, 2017

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author by this name in the Goodreads database.

Reviews

[Lydia Fung · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was expecting more insights from Mike as he is a well-known author with many good bridge books written. However, the book was a bit disappointing for an advanced player. Many topics that he covered were quite easy and common bridge sense in my opinion, thus I personally may not think I will become a better player and more difficult opponent after reading the book. In this book he emphasized the concept of judgment rather than simple rules and agreements, however the examples he showed were mainly some fundamental hand evaluations, but not those high-level bidding judgments or defense judgments. Moreover, I believe the conventions that Mike suggested to use/abandon have been widely covered among bridge players nowadays. There are for sure even better or modified conventions than simple drury, Michaels, Jacoby 2NT etc. You may have gained if you are an elementary/intermediate player who would need more exposure.

[David Abernethy · Rating 4 out of 5]

The author's goal is to teach how to use good judgment at the bridge table, rather than to present a system. The unifying theme is how to be a better bidder in competitive bidding situations, with the goal often being to interfere with the opponents' bidding. Much of the material deals with bidding conventions. Conveniently, the author classifies conventions according to how useful they are considerd to be. Close study is required, but the material is clearly presented. To make the reading lively, the author sometimes gets too choppy for me. The best audience will be the serious intermediate player. The reader will get a lot of ideas for the money.

[Al · Rating 3 out of 5]

I think I've read almost everything Mike Lawrence has written, and while there are many good bridge analysts and writers, for my money he's the best there is. This book has lots of good stuff in it, but it doesn't come up to Mike's other work. It looks like he just threw it together; it's a mishmash with no theme, and it's sloppily written and edited, with lots of filler material and padding that looks like it was added just to make enough pages to call it a book. Come on, Mike, you can do better!

[Monte Lamb · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a very good book on using good sense at the Bridge table. It covers important topics in a concise manner using excellent example hands. I particularly thought the author did a good job of making his points without getting lost in too many examples or confusing the issues by what to avoid. IMO, this is one of his best books by far.